Submitted by American Man on
Image by SnapwireSnaps from http://Pixabay.com
What do you think?
Is patriotism spiritual?
Can it bring you closer to your soul’s path?
Well it depends…
Of course we love the country we’re born in or live in!
And there seem to be plenty of patriotic movements around the world lately, and they seem to bring out the best and worst in people.
But if you’re spiritually minded, where does it all fit in? Which side do you take? Which cause do you support? Which conversation do you take part in?
It all starts at the core of who you are.
START WITH ASKING THESE 3 QUESTIONS:
How do you define yourself?
How strong is your sense of identity?
How far would you go to defend your identity?
Our ego has one important job – and that is to defend our identity – whatever we identify with! This sense of identity is necessary for a person to be able to notice boundaries – whether those boundaries are personal bubbles around ourselves, whether they’re around our families that we hold dear, whether that boundary is around our country, or whether it’s around the world as a whole.
So when you ask yourself what your identity is, how you define yourself gives you a clue into how closed or expansive your boundaries are. The wider our boundaries are, the more universal our identities are!
Back to my first question:
IS PATRIOTISM A SPIRITUAL PATH?
The spiritual journey is all about unraveling our identity – to constantly ask ourselves who we are, and then going deeper and deeper underneath those layers of how we define ourselves.
So can patriotism be a spiritual path?
Yes! As long as it is in support of the humanitarian cause – to not simply support our countries blindly, but to lead them to more expansive values, and to help make this a better planet.
After all, we’re all children of Creation. That’s our first identity before all else.